More Copyright Oddities: Why Does Yoko Ono Get To Hold Copyright On Lennon Videos Others Purchased

from the something's-missing dept

Michael Scott points us to a story about a copyright battle involving Yoko Ono and some video footage of John Lennon. I can only assume that the AP report summarizing the case is leaving out some important details, because otherwise the ruling doesn't make much sense. From the article, the timeline of events appears to be:

• 10 hours of video footage of John Lennon were shot at his estate in 1970 (when the Beatles were still together) by Anthony Cox (Yoko Ono's ex-husband, prior to her marriage to Lennon).
• In 2000, Cox sold the footage to World Wide Video for $125,000. Since he shot the video, it seems reasonable to assume the copyright did, in fact, belong with him -- unless there's some evidence of a work for hire agreement somewhere (not mentioned in the article). Thus, it would seem the sale would be legit.
• In 2001, a third party, Anthony Pagola, claimed to have copies of the same videos, and demanded that World Wide Video let him sell them. WWV claims that Pagola got the tapes from an ex-employee of WWV who stole them.
• In 2002, Pagola sold the videos and "the copyright" to Yoko Ono for $300,000. The owners of WWV claim that their signatures were forged on the sale sheet by Pagola
• In the intervening years, WWV created a documentary out of the footage, which it planned to release in 2008 until Ono sued them.
• WWV countersued, claiming that Ono was violating its copyright
• Ono asked the judge to declare the copyright was hers... and the judge agreed.

Assuming all of this is true, it's hard to see how Ono has a valid claim to the copyright, but the courts have ruled in her favor. The Boston Globe article has a bit more info, though it's still troubling. Apparently, the judge's reasoning was that WWV failed to take action to "reclaim the copyright" in the intervening years, even though it had "plenty of warnings" that Ono believed she had purchased the rights.

This seems incredibly backwards, with a touch of copyfraud thrown in for good measure. Why should WWV need to "reclaim" the copyright on something when they simply believed they held the copyright all along. Since, once again, copyright is not tangible property, it makes perfect sense that WWV would believe it still held the copyright in question, even if Ono thought she had purchased it. The fact that they didn't make a proactive effort to "reclaim" what they thought they already had doesn't seem to be a reason for Ono to now keep the copyright. It seems like evidence that WWV believed it properly held the copyright all along.

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EMI Loses Lawsuit To Prevent John Lennon's Imagine From Appearing In Expelled

from the good-decision dept

Larry Lessig points us to news of another good court decision, tossing out EMI's attempt to stop Ben Stein's movie Expelled from using John Lennon's song Imagine. If this sounds somewhat familiar, it's because Yoko Ono had filed a similar lawsuit -- which she lost. In both cases, the courts have recognized that Stein's use of the song is pretty clearly fair use. As the link above points out, this is important for a variety of reasons -- including a terrible ruling a few years back that said effectively that there was no fair use for music samples. It's good to see courts recognizing that fair use applies to music as well as other types of content.

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Judge Sides With Ben Stein Over Yoko Ono In Fair Use Dispute

from the imagine-copyright-made-sense dept

Back in April, we covered the dispute between Yoko Ono and the controversial Ben Stein movie Expelled. Ono was upset that the movie used a snippet of John Lennon's Imagine for criticism purposes. While the movie has many problems, and given the controversial nature of the subject matter, one can understand why Ono doesn't want the song used in the movie -- that doesn't mean she had a legal leg to stand on. As we noted, it seemed pretty clear that the movie makers were very much on the right side of the law, and now a judge has agreed. In turning down Ono's request for an injunction against the movie, the judge noted that the defendants were likely to prevail using a "fair use" defense.

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There Can Be Only One... Lennon?

from the oh-please dept

ehrichweiss writes "Yoko Ono filed what is essentially a lawsuit with the Trademark and Trial Board of the US Patent & Trademark Office this week over a musician's ownership of the trademark of "Lennon", attempting to force the musician to give up her trademark. The musician, Lennon Murphy, has owned the trademark since 2003 and had sought permission from Arista records and Yoko to release under the name "Lennon" back in 2000. Yoko apparently waited until 2 days before the statute of limitations ran out to file the lawsuit."

The details on this are a bit murky, but the reality is that neither party looks good here. It seems rather silly that the musician tried to trademark "Lennon" in the first place. While it does seem odd that Yoko Ono waited until two days before the statute of limitations expired to file her complaints about the trademark, just the fact that people are arguing over whether or not a given name can be covered by trademark suggests how far lost our intellectual property laws have become. It's easy to make Yoko Ono look bad over this, but the fact that Murphy singer tried to trademark Lennon in the first place does seem problematic.

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